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Decor & Renovating Interior Design // Living Room // Designing, Decorating, and Painting a Living Room
If you’ve decided your living room is ready for a makeover, you might be seeking some advice and guidance. Many who are new to home renovation projects get a little confused when they search the Internet and see the terms “design” and “decorate” used as though they were the same thing. Are they? What’s the difference between designing and decorating?
If you’re confused about the difference, you are far from alone. If you’re the old fashioned type and you still have a Webster’s dictionary on a bookshelf somewhere in your home, look up “interior design.”
What you’ll find is something like the following: “the art or practice of the planning and supervising the execution of architectural interiors and their furnishings.” When you look up “interior decorating” you’ll be told to “see interior design!”
To make sense of this in a way that is helpful to homeowners let us turn to the world of architecture, where a basic principle is: form should follow function. The function of a structure is its purpose; how it is intended to be used. The form of a structure is the physical appearance it takes.
For example, you may currently use your living room as a family multi-purpose room, with a television, recliner chairs for mom and dad, and toy boxes for the children. But if the children are grown, you want to redefine the function of the room.
Since viewing television has become one of our principal sources of relaxation, the first design issue to consider is whether or not you want your living room to serve as your primary entertainment location.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to use your living room as a gathering place for a few dinner guests where they can relax and converse with each other before and after dinner; your decorating scheme will differ.
Good designers will tell you rooms should have a focal point around which you build your design and the decorating components needed to achieve the intended function. For a living room which will serve as the principal area to watch television, that focal point is an entertainment center.
Furniture is selected and placed to support the function of a relaxing place to watch TV. Thus a somewhat less than fully comfortable wingback chair that might be totally appropriate for a more formal living room is totally inappropriate for an entertainment lounge room.
The final bit of design advice has to do with creating an atmosphere, a mood, a style, throughout your home that matches your individual personality and tastes. If you think of yourself as modern and up to date, contemporary furniture and decorating styles are appropriate. If you’re more conservative, traditional styles are probably for you.
Although this expression should be reflected in the accessories you choose, the wall decorations you choose, and the flooring you select, no where is it more in evidence than in the paint colors you select.
Bold uses of color reflect a contemporary mood. Neutral colors do not. Some designers advise playing it safe and going with neutral wall paint shades and making your expressions of color evident in room accessories, but why not do both? Darker shades are more dramatic and, with the inclusion of chair rail molding around the perimeter of the living room, you have the added option of darker shades below the chair rail and lighter shades above.
Continue your daring design and decorating by painting the chair rail and window trim in yet another, darker (but compatible) shade of color. Finally, for the ultimate, consider painting the ceiling in the darkest shade in the room. That might sound outrageous but if you search through fine decorating magazines you’re sure to see examples of this. They can be truly dramatic in larger rooms!
